Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
Last Friday, I was standing on the inside of the Harry Geldien Track at Kelly Walsh High School waiting to photograph the first exchange zone in the 4×100-meter relay. I was adjacent to the triple jump pit, but outside the clearly flagged runway.
A couple of guys, one wearing a Sundance Bulldog jacket and the other a Little Snake River polo shirt, made a comment I overheard.
“You’ve got to watch these old guys,” one of them said as they looked in my direction.
With a smile, I said, “Just wait, you clowns, if you live long enough, this will be you.”
They took it well. They took it even better when I started talking about coaches from Sundance and Little Snake River that I’d known and coached against.
When I mentioned one, the Sundance guy, got a bit nervous. The man in question was his principal, and he didn’t know how well I knew him. Pretty well, but I wasn’t upset. I was just conducting a “teaching moment” to these two young coaches.
We ended up having a great conversation.
I’ve been at this a while. My first sports reporting gig came back in the spring of 1981 when I covered the wrestling team at Niobrara County High School for the Lusk Herald. It paid a whopping six cents a column inch. Not much, but it was fun to write, and I didn’t have to take photographs; they sent a photographer to the matches.
I made peanuts in printed media over the next 41 years. Newspapers don’t pay much.
Working for County 10 has been a much more lucrative venture.
It’s a venture I’m starting to feel in my knees, my neck, and my overall energy level.
Last Thursday was a typical state track and field day. I’ve endured dozens of them over the years.
Snow, rain, sleet, hail, high wind, and low temperatures created a constant barrage. I admire the kids who compete so well in these conditions. It would probably kill a competitor from Texas, Arizona, or Southern California to just watch from the stands, rather than compete with weather like this.
During football, you can escape indoors at halftime and not miss a beat. Sometimes, if the game is a blowout, I’ve retreated to my truck and listened to the second half on the radio, or better yet, if I’m covering the Wolverines, I just walk or drive the short distance home and catch Jarrad and Jason on the high definition County 10 YouTube broadcast.
Basketball and volleyball are even easier. Shoot a few images, make sure they match your suspected storyline, and take a seat in press row to catch the play-by-play for a story.
Wrestling is a bit more work. You need to capture images of each match since you don’t know which one will be the lead.
Still, it’s warm, the lighting is easy once you’ve adjusted your camera settings, and the press row is just a few steps away.
Last Thursday was different. It was an ordeal. I had on three layers of t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, and hoodie with a long, hooded raincoat, and rain pants over my jeans, and still it wasn’t enough. The driving wind forced the water inside the rain gear, and I was soaked by the time I reached the motel that night.
I’ve noticed over the years that when working outside, even in sub-zero temperatures, you don’t get cold if you’re moving. Loading hay on a feed trailer, shoveling snow, or working to get a vehicle started at -20 doesn’t faze me. It’s when I get inside that it hits.
Once you’re back in a 68-degree house, you’ve taken off your down vest and Carhartt jacket, you should be warm, but that’s when it hits. You get a sudden chill after you’re inside. It makes no sense. It makes even less sense when you eat something and suddenly get a cold chill.
That hit me on the second floor of the Quality Inn last Thursday. I was freezing.
It was enough to make me question how long I can continue to cover athletics. I’ll turn 70 in six months. That’s a venerable age for any activity, but a bit challenging for outdoor winter conditions.
I noticed a lot of veteran coaches I met when I started in 1980 were still on the track, but every one of them now had a portable chair they carried. They walked to an event, snapped the chair into place, and took a seat. That’s an option, but not much of one if you’re a photographer. You still have to be able to move, to position yourself and time the shot if you want something publishable.
It’s a quandary.
The athletic school year came to an end around 4 p.m. on Saturday at Kelly Walsh with the Class 4-A boys’ 4×400-meter relay.
It’s another one in the books.
Summertime is easy for a sports reporter. You write a few features, cover American Legion Baseball, maybe catch a Little League or Babe Ruth game, and drop in on local rodeos.
The change in reporting technology over the last three decades is impressive.
It’s a far cry from one memorable weekend in 1997 when I had seven Class 1-A and 2-A boys’ and girls’ teams playing in the state tournament in Casper.
It was long before digital cameras were commonplace. The Internet was still accessible via dial-up modems, and getting stories back to the office to publish meant bringing in canisters of black and white film and three-and-a-half-inch floppy disks with stories.
I took my then 10-year-old son Brian with me for Thursday’s games, letting him skip school. He had a great time. I took my heavy, steel-cased desktop with me as well, and a large CRT-style monitor to the motel room.
As Brian slept, I wrote the seven opening round stories and copied them to two separate floppy disks (just in case). The next morning, we left at 6:30 am to meet a friend at Hell’s Half Acre.
I bought everyone’s breakfast, and Clay drove Brian back to Riverton, dropped the disks and film off, and it made the Friday newspaper.
Today I often write the story at courtside on “Press Row” at Casper College or the Ford Wyoming Center, process images and send the story to Vince Tropea to edit and publish on the County 10 webpage within 30 minutes of the end of the game. It’s a quantum leap from the old days to write, process, and publish at the speed of light.
Now the dilemma, take a chair? Back off on the coverage? Or stop covering some sports entirely?
For now, the camera is charged. The back seat is full of extra clothes, gloves, rain gear, shorts, t-shirts, and sunscreen (this is Wyoming after all), and the next season is just a summer away.
I’ll let you know.